Here we are again in the middle of another Soccer World Cup. In the media we see images of the whole world all revved up with enthusiasm for the so-called "King of Sports" or "The Most Popular Sport in the Planet". But here in the United States a majority of Americans are once again left wondering what the hoopla is all about and perplexed at the passion soccer evokes. Soccer indeed can stir up very strong emotions. Wars have been started or temporarily suspended as a result of soccer matches. People have died or been injured as a result of clashes between soccer fans, and some people have been known to commit suicide when their team did not win the World Cup. Players have been marginalized for the rest of their lives, retired, or even killed for failing to win a game or for committing a crucial mistake that led to the loss of a game. Referees have had to go into hiding for making a call considered unfair. The lives of entire groups of people around the globe revolve around the performance of their favorite teams, and the productivity of entire regions in certain countries goes up or down depending on whether the local soccer team wins. Certain teams and specific players have become legends. Their names and their feats are enshrined in museums and celebrated in word and song. Certain infamous games or goals or other events during the game where a team was "cheated" of a win, linger in the collective consciousness of countries decades after the fact. Some are even still discussed and analyzed nowadays with computer technology applied to ancient archival footage. When the national teams play in a World Cup all the activity in certain countries comes to a halt. The streets become deserted. No one works, including the police, which is not a problem because all the criminals are also watching the game. If the team wins there is a huge celebration with people stopping traffic and dancing in the streets. If the team loses the whole country goes into a long period of mourning as though a national catastrophe had occurred. So many people ask themselves: What is it with Americans? Why haven't they caught the soccer bug like everyone else? Why do they prefer this sport the rest of the world calls "American Football" over soccer? This question is even more relevant if you consider that soccer is the most popular (even more than football) youth participation sport in the United States up to the age of 13. I have investigated a little and have found that several explanations have been proposed ranging from the plausible to the whimsical. Let's take a look. 1) Not enough scoring Americans say that watching soccer is like having fun watching the grass grow. They claim that there is not enough scoring for the amount of time that one spends watching the actual game. The average number of total goals per game in world cup soccer from 1990 onward is about 2 to 3, whereas the average number of touchdowns per NFL football game has seen an uptick in recent years and was 4.92 in 2011. So there are more touchdowns per game in football than goals in soccer. But of course football is not a game of touchdowns; football is a game of points. Each touchdown is 6 points but you also have the option of kicking a field goal for 3 points (of course after a touchdown a team can go for the extra point kick or the 2 point conversion, but this is only after a touchdown). So in this aspect football does have an additional scoring mechanism besides touchdowns that makes it difficult for a game to end up scoreless. The last scoreless game in NFL history was back in 1943, whereas scoreless games in soccer are quite common. To this consideration you also have to add game times. In professional soccer you have 2 halves of 45 minutes for a total of 90 minutes of game time whereas professional football has 4 quarters of 15 minutes each for a total of 60 minutes of game time. So if scoring is important for Americans, football does come out ahead. 2) Not enough timeouts Americans like their timeouts and have no patience for a constant action game like soccer. In football the clock does stop after certain plays and if the game is broadcast on television TV timeouts are taken. All this can extend the actual length of a football game (from start to finish) to more than 3 hours. By comparison in soccer there is only a 15 minute rest period between halves making the actual start to finish length of a soccer game 105 minutes. So if Americans like timeouts then football is more suited for them. 3) Lack of physicality, the game is not violent or "manly" enough. Americans tend to like physical sports and they argue soccer is not physical enough. At high school or college level a common derogatory comment about soccer is that "it is a sport for girls". The fact that the U.S. woman's soccer team has won the Woman's World cup 2 times with 1 second and 3 third places finished, while the men's team has only achieved a third place finish back in 1930 of course does not help. Football is arguably a more physical sport than soccer. Despite all the protective gear, many football players suffer serious injuries regularly and many players experience injuries that still pain them many years after they have retired and that require multiple surgeries. The average NFL player's career lasts about 3.8 years whereas soccer players can play well into their thirties with careers lasting 10 years or more. There is also the fact that many soccer players feign an injury to hoax the referee into calling a penalty or have the other player expelled. This is considered by many Americans to be dishonest sissy-like behavior not becoming of a man. So if indeed physical manly confrontation is what Americans want then this is a reason to prefer Football.

4) Football is "Institutionalized" It is argued that, as opposed to soccer, the nature of football with its timeouts fits just right into American corporate and consumer culture. It is also argued that the popularity of football at the college level has turned it into huge money-making enterprise. The above create an insurmountable barrier for soccer to become popular in the United States. These seem also valid reasons for the difficulty that soccer has encountered in becoming more mainstream in the United States. 5) There are too many sports in the U.S. Another argument is that the sport's market in the United States is saturated. Football reigns supreme, but basketball, baseball, ice hockey, golf, etc. mop up the rest of soccer's potential fans. So soccer does not compete only against football for fans but against all those other sports. This is another plausible reason too why soccer has had trouble gaining traction in the United States. 6) You can't use your hands. It has been argued that there is something about being able to use your hands that runs deep within the "can do" American psyche or its "pioneer spirit". That is why sports invented in the U.S. such as football, baseball and basketball all involve using your hands. Because of this a sport like soccer is anathema to Americans. I don't know if this is true but there may be something to it. 7) Americans are not good at soccer and don't like it because they can't dance. There is the perception by many that, despite some exceptions, the average American guy cannot dance very well and feels uncomfortable about even trying it. Thus, because soccer requires the major footwork and leg to hip coordination that comes naturally from dancing, American guys are not good at it and can't relate to it. I am not sure that in general being a better dancer makes you a better soccer player or a more enthusiastic soccer fan. With regards to the "better player" part of this claim, you would have to argue that how good of a dancer the average guy is, somehow relates to the number of World Cups their country has won. The way it stands now it is (World Cups per country): Brazil 5 Italy 4 Germany 3 Argentina & Uruguay 2 England 1 France 1 Spain 1 So there you have it, are the Brazilian and Italian guys better dancers than the English, the French, and the Spanish (with the German, Argentinean and Uruguayans in between)? 8) No cheerleaders. It has been argued that Americans (here I guess this means guys) prefer football to soccer because of the cheerleaders (soccer in the U.S. doesn't have cheerleaders). After all, what good is a sport without a little porn? No comment. These are some of the reasons that have been put forward to explain why Americans have not caught the soccer bug. Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think about them and suggest any other explanations that you may have.

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This brought a tear to my eye. Leader-clad motorcyclists with tattoos and helmets are the least thing you would associate with preventing child abuse. But this group,BACA (Bikers Against Child Abuse) does just that.

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A hieroglyphic on a wall of the Temple of Luxor in Egypt reads: Man, know thyself and thou shalt know the Gods. This maxim, often shortened to “know thyself,” is a recurring motif in philosophical thought. The idea behind this teaching refers to knowledge about our inner selves, and gaining that knowledge is often a lifelong process requiring much effort and sacrifice. However, technological advances have made it possible for individuals to effortlessly gain a type of vital knowledge about themselves that was not contemplated by ancient philosophers: the knowledge contained in the genes. Ancestry is one aspect of the knowledge that can be glimpsed from sequencing the genes of a person. Unlike most molecules in nature, the molecules of DNA contained in our cells are historical documents. They contain information about who our ancestors were, and combined with other information can reveal to us where we came from. Nowadays there are several companies that offer to sequence your genes and provide this kind of information. But the most important information that the genes can reveal to an individual is about that person’s health. In the years following the completion of the human genome project, scientists have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about the effects of genes on the risk of acquiring certain diseases. A recent high visibility example of what this knowledge can be used for was when the actress Angelina Jolie decided to undergo a double mastectomy after learning that she has a mutation in a gene called BRCA1 that greatly increases her risk of breast cancer. As with ancestry, there are several companies that offer their services to sequence genes and provide individuals with information on how their genetic makeup can affect their health. For example, you can learn if you have defective genes that could make treatment with certain drugs fatal or if you have certain genes that can increase your chance of suffering conditions like stroke or diabetes. This genetic information can also be used by doctors to tailor the treatment patients will receive and has the potential to usher in a new era in personalized medicine.

However, genetic knowledge can be a double-edged sword. There are some diseases for which there is no cure. In those cases a positive result for a defective gene will basically tell individuals how and approximately when they will die, which is not the knowledge most people may want to have. Additionally, genetic information has the potential to be used by insurance companies to calculate the risks of insuring a given individual and charge higher premiums or refuse coverage. And what about finding a mate? Do you have the right to know the genetic information of the person you want to marry? What if you found out that the person you love and wish to marry has a genetic makeup that when combined with your own will produce a child with a severe disease? Also, what if governments or institutions with racial or ethnic agendas use this information in troublesome ways? Imagine the likes of a Hitler having access to the genetic information of every single individual in the country. Accessibility to genetic knowledge raises as many questions as it answers. Currently, sequencing part of a person’s genome to derive ancestry or some health information is affordable, but sequencing the full complement of genes costs several thousand dollars and is outside the reach of the average person. However, technological advancements are reducing sequencing times and making the process cheaper. It is conceivable that within a decade not only will full genetic information be accessible to the average person, but it may even be part of the routine tests that are applied when babies are born. What will we do with that information? Where will it be stored? Who will read it? Perhaps the Egyptian who carved that maxim in the temple of Luxor had a point. Should we first know ourselves before we know our genes?Photo credits:Double Helix: Jun Seita / Foter.com / CC BY-NCTemple of Luxor: dorena-wm / Foter.com / CC BY-ND

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In 1977 Stephen King published a novel entitled Rage under the pen name of Richard Bachman. In this novel a troubled high school student kills two teachers using a gun and then holds his class hostage. The gun-toting teen and his hostages end up bonding and talking about their lives and the secrets they have been hiding. The end result is a twisted version of what happens in a movie that was made 8 years later: the teen classic Breakfast Club. I think Rage is a brilliant work with regards to its social commentary. However, insofar as horror is concerned the novel is really not a big deal in a genre that figures all sorts of monsters, psychos, and grotesque occurrences. The problem with Rage is that it made the leap from the fictional into the real. Some actual and attempted school shootings during the 80s and 90s were linked back to the novel when it was discovered that the perpetrators had read it and could have been inspired by it. The author was so shocked by this that he asked his publisher to take the novel out of print. So let me get to the crux of this post. If you found that a book you wrote was inspiring acts of violence, would you remove the book from circulation? We can even take it a step back. Would you write something if you knew that there would be the chance some disturbed person somewhere would use it as an inspiration to harm others? Would you censor yourself? In my next book of short stories, Spirit Women, there are stories where murders are committed. Should I publish it? What if I give ideas to some disturbed person? Would I want that on my conscience? Do I have a social responsibility as a writer? Should I stick to writing the wholesome family stories that are featured in my book The Sun Zebra forever? One problem is that deranged people will be inspired by the craziest things to carry out or justify their acts. Charles Manson and his clan took inspiration from songs by the Beatles (most notably Helter Skelter) and from the book of Revelations in the Bible when carrying out their brutal murders in 1969. Timothy McVeigh made a reference to the reaction of audiences to the blowing of the Death Star in the movie Star Wars to justify the morality of his bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. A sick or troubled mind will twist anything to justify preconceived beliefs. However, the cases above are “abstract” whereas the specific subject matter of novels like Rage is more explicit and therefore more prone to produce copycat behavior. And I do admit that when it comes to kids and guns the issue is way too emotional for me to deal with, especially after the recent Sandy Hook shooting. To answer the questions I posed above, I think that if I had written Rage I would have done like Mr. King and yanked it from the shelves if I had found it could have inspired acts of violence. But would I have written it at all? The puzzling answer is yes. I would have written it and then hoped for the best. The reason behind my apparent contradiction is that I believe stories like Rage are nothing but mirrors. What they show us may not be pretty, but if these stories are censored we would never see our reflection. In the case of Rage that reflection was a society that was ignoring abuse by teachers, bullying by students, and domestic violence in the community. Challenging the status quo always produces conflict and occasionally has tragic consequences, but is censorship and business as usual the alternative? What do you think? ***If you like this blog you can have links to each week's posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here.